Published on February 4th, 2010

Legislators lack appetite to tackle subsistence

By BOB TKACZ

"Dual management, being the state and the feds, I'm just wondering how's that working out?" Rep. Reggie Joule, D-Kotzebue, asked Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd.

"I think in a perfect world we would we would prefer not to have dual management, that there are quite a number of instances of complication and unnecessary duplication," Lloyd answered at a Jan. 25 review of his department by the House Finance Committee.

The casual exchange may have been the largest review lawmakers will give to one of Alaska's longest-lasting and most divisive resource management problems this year. Twenty years after the Alaska Supreme Court's 1989 McDowell decision struck down the rural harvest priority in state law, federal fish and game management has steadily increased. Some say it is here to stay.

"I think that the permanency of the federal government is probably here and that to me is the biggest, I guess, realization that's kind of coming home to roost for Alaska," Joule said in a separate interview, Jan. 22.

Federal management has been operating long enough that the U.S. Department of the Interior decided the system needs a review. Native leaders are hoping the effort will result in more control for rural residents of a system they say is dominated by federal agency heads. The Obama administration, and a Democrat majority in Congress, are also seen by Native leaders across the country as an opportunity to make significant gains in a range of Native rights areas. But there appears to be no consideration of the possibility of increasing state management.

"A fundamental premise of this review is going to be that we can no longer expect the state to regain subsistence management on federal lands," said Kim Elton, the Interior Department's director of Alaska affairs, at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention last October where the review was announced.

One bill introduced

The Legislature has not devoted serious attention to the subsistence issue in more than a decade. This year one bill addressing the issue has been introduced, but it has large implications in the sport vs. commercial "salmon wars" and has little likelihood of passing this year.

The bill, HB 266, sponsored by Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, would make personal use the highest priority in a fishery where stock levels require harvest restrictions. Current law gives subsistence harvest the most protection, and how serious Stoltze is about passing his own bill is unclear.

At the same hearing with Lloyd, Stoltze said, "If you were to go around the table just about every person here, myself included, would say that subsistence is the highest priority." He later declined to explain the contradiction between his comment and his bill, but interviews with lawmakers who acknowledge that divided management is a confusing burden for hunters and fishers suggest no one really knows how to address the question.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Fairbanks, has been the most vocal House critic of federal management in recent years. He describes "The Fed" as bureaucrats with no real understanding of hunting and fishing in the state or jack-booted field agents harassing Alaskans trying only to feed their families.

"How much more can The Fed come down on our head than totally ignore the playing field here in Alaska and take over our fish and game?" he asked. On the idea that federal management is here to stay, Kelly said, "I can only speak for one Alaskan and the answer is: No." But he also agrees that nothing will happen on subsistence this year.

"There are enough folks on both sides of the Legislature that, counting to 11 and 21 on it, to make a change would be difficult and I'm certainly not suggesting that I'm believing the Legislature cranking up on it now makes any sense," Kelly said on Jan. 22. Eleven and 21 are the number of votes needed to pass any bill in the Senate and House, respectively.

No clear consensus

Even if lawmakers agree on a course of inaction, their reasons differ greatly. One is the lack of any new options other than passage of an amendment to the Alaska Constitution that would revive the rural harvest priority and allow the state to regain state management.

That approach failed in special sessions called by Govs. Wally Hickel and Tony Knowles due to a lack of support among urban lawmakers. Now, rural legislators say their people are also likely to oppose an amendment because they feel more secure with federal oversight.

At an opening-day news conference Sen. Albert Kookesh, D-Angoon, suggested rural residents would vote against a rural priority constitutional amendment that would return management control to the state. Rep. Joule said the Native community, among others, has failed to educate the steady stream of new urban residents coming to Alaska over the past decade about the cultural and social importance of subsistence to the Native community.

"I'm not even sure that a constitutional amendment is a starting place. That kind of leaves everything out there," Joule said.

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Legislators lack appetite to tackle subsistence